The Broomway is the notorious footpath to Foulness Island in Britain. It's narrow, unmarked, surrounded by sea, sticky mud, and quicksand, and sinks under the tide twice a day. Oh yeah, and there may be explosives. So of course, Tom Scott had to walk it to show us what we are missing.

You know the movie It's a Wonderful Life well, but there's always more to learn. A bit of movie trivia will make watching it again this Christmas even more interesting. Some of the trivia is about the production or references that you might not know 74 years later, like the Zuzu Gingersnaps. Others are about its legacy and longevity.  

It'a a Wonderful Life was a flop when it played in theaters, but has become a beloved classic since then. Read more trivia about It's a Wonderful Life at Cracked.

'Is anybody in there?' Life on the inside as a locked-in patient https://t.co/M1QoPEBt1X

— The Guardian (@guardian) November 26, 2020

Jake Haendel came close to dying in 2017. He was diagnosed with toxic progressive leukoencephalopathy, caused by the use of adulterated heroin. Haendel did not die, but spent a year unable to move or communicate, while still being painfully aware of bodily sensations, the passage of time, and what was going on around him.  

To outside observers, Jake exhibited no signs of awareness or cognition. “Is he in there?” his wife and father would ask the doctors. No one knew for sure. An electroencephalogram (EEG) of his brain showed disrupted patterns of neural activity, indicating severe cerebral dysfunction. “Jake was pretty much like a houseplant,” his father told me.

They had no way of knowing Jake was conscious. In medical terms, he was “locked in”: his senses were intact, but he had no way of communicating.

“I could do nothing except listen and I could only see the direct area in front of me, based on how the staff would position me in bed,” Jake later wrote. The disease had attacked the cables carrying information through his brain and into his muscles, but had spared the areas that enable conscious processing, so he was fully alert to the horror of his situation. He struggled to make sense of this new reality, unable to communicate, and terrified at the prospect of this isolation being permanent.

Haendel tells of the despair and boredom of those months, and the joy of gradually regaining his abilities at the Guardian. -via Damn Interesting

Have you ever seen inside a pregnant elephant? Asha is a third of the way through her pregnancy; that's eight months of 22, so the calf isn't due until 2022! Veterinarians at the Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Gardens took a look with an ultrasound and saw the head, trunk, and legs as the little fellow seems to have plenty of room to move around. Read more about Asha and the zoo's other Asian elephants at Bored Panda.

The 1988 film Die Hard was planned as a summer blockbuster, and indeed was released in July. However, because it begins with a Christmas party, it has become known as a Christmas movie, explosions and all. How much do you know about Die Hard? It's time for some movie trivia!

You'll know a lot more about Die Hard after reading a list of pictofacts at Cracked.

A couple of months ago, the Coca-Cola company announced it was dropping quite a few of its niche products, including Tab. You may have reacted the way I did, with surprise that Tab was still being produced in 2020. Introduced in 1963, it was not the first diet soda, but became the best-known. Earlier diet sodas were developed for diabetics, but exposed a market for low-calorie soda for dieters. Coca-Cola decided to dip into that pool, albeit gingerly.

For the name, Coke executives had one directive: Even though its taste was engineered to mimic Coke’s, it couldn’t be called Diet Coke. Because most early diet sodas didn’t taste that great, strategists warned against associating their brands with drinks that might taint their tremendous value.

So an early IBM mainframe computer generated more than 600 candidates with the parameters that the name be three or four letters and not offensive in any foreign language.

Tabb, which was eventually shortened to Tab, eventually won the battle of market testing. Stylized as “TaB,” it was introduced to the world in a series of ads with the tagline “How can just one calorie taste so good?”

Tab became the best-selling diet soda of the 1970s and '80s. Read the story of the diet soda that held on for 57 years, and what killed it, at The Conversation. -via Digg

(Image credit: Jerry "Woody")

Maru and Hana (previously at Neatorama) have a new kitten! Miri the young calico was rescued from a roadside gutter (what we would call a ditch) and brought to mugumogu for adoption. Miri is settling in just fine, and will soon find out what it's like to go from the gutter to internet stardom.

In Miri's first video, she starts out shy and reticent, then eats, and finally becomes comfortable enough to chase her own tail and play with her new mama's finger. Maru, now 13 years old, is as inscrutable as ever when meeting the new family member, but he does have something to say about her. It isn't long before Maru begins to teach Miri the ins and outs of their perfect cat-centric home, as you see in the above video. -via Metafilter

Eleven countries declared the year 1882-1883 as the “International Polar Year,” to encourage and highlight exploration of the far north. Those nations launched 14 expeditions to the Arctic, one of which was the Greely Expedition. Led by former Union officer Adolphus Greely, the expedition consisted of 25 men who set up a science observation station at Ellesmere Island near northern Greenland.  

Things seemed to be going well, but the ship route to Ellesmere was only accessible for a short time during the summer. The rest of the time, ice blocked the passage, and ships ran a substantial risk of being trapped and broken if they tried to pass at the wrong interval. The expedition’s success depended on ships being able to reach the party with supplies and refreshed rations each August. One ship was due to re-supply the team in August 1882, and another would bring them home the following summer. Neither ship arrived—one could not pass the ice, and another sank after being crushed.

Depending on one shipment of supplies per year is a disastrous plan, especially before instant global communications. Read about the rescue of the Greely Expedition, a story sparked by the discovery of a caribou sleeping bag that P.T. Barnum saved from the incident, at Atlas Obscura.

There are angry ladies all over Yankee Candle’s site reporting that none of the candles they just got had any smell at all. I wonder if they’re feeling a little hot and nothing has much taste for the last couple days too.

— Terri Nelson (@TerriDrawsStuff) November 24, 2020

The earliest symptoms of COVID-19 we heard of were cough and fever. Then word spread that many victims reported a loss of their sense of smell. All these months later, symptoms vary widely, from none to severe, and the disease affects people in so many ways that many are infected without even knowing it. So is it any surprise that people who purchase scented Yankee Candles may be upset that they can't smell them?

Kate Petrova saw the Tweet by Terri Nelson and went to work crunching the numbers.

Could it be because of the COVID-related loss of smell? To investigate, I plotted the reviews of the 3 most popular unscented candles on Amazon*, and the difference was quite striking 3/n

*One thing to note: fewer reviews are available for unscented candles than for scented ones pic.twitter.com/D9NdknJJAU

— Kate Petrova (@kate_ptrv) November 27, 2020

Petrova has more graphs that show a striking correlation between complaints over scentless candles and the spread of COVID in the US. Read the rest at Twitter or at Threadreader. -via Metafilter

Here's a finding that provides fascinating clues for ...further study. Archaeologists have found tools used by both Neanderthals and early modern humans, and a deep dive into their thumbs sheds light on how they used those tools. Scientists from the University of Kent measured the shape of thumb bones, specifically the bone connected to the wrist, on a microscopic level to determine the most common grip used by Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. 

"The joint at the base of the thumb of the Neanderthal fossils is flatter with a smaller contact surface between the bones, which is better suited to an extended thumb positioned alongside the side of the hand," Bardo says. "This thumb posture suggests the regular use of power ‘squeeze’ grips, which is the grip we use when we hold tools with handles, like a hammer."

On the other hand, human "joint surfaces are generally larger and more curved," a shape which lends itself well to "gripping objects between the pads of the finger and thumb, known as a precision grip," Bardo explains.

It's not that the Neanderthals couldn't use precision grips, but rather they would have found them difficult. Instead, they adapted better to power grips for handling tools.

How did the different grips affect the two species' everyday lives? We don't know. Did the difference between grips contribute to the Neanderthals' downfall? We don't know that, either. It may have been a tiny adaptation that made less of a difference than, say, war. But it opens up a field of study that may provide answers down the line regarding the ascendence of Homo sapiens and the extinction of
Homo neanderthalensis. Read more about the study at Inverse. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Ameline Bardo)

It wasn't just the Greeks; everywhere we look there are ancient writings that mention all kinds of colors, but not blue. Figuring out why takes us on a journey through time and culture and the relationship between language and observation. -via The Mary Sue

Railroad tycoon Charles Crocker bought a lot in San Francisco in 1878 and built a big mansion. He wanted to own the entire city block, and managed to buy up all the neighbor's lots except for one holdout: Nicholas Yung. Yung saw no reason to move, and refused to sell his corner property. Well, he finally engaged in negotiations, but asked for a price Crocker wasn't willing to pay -even though it was less than other property owners were getting.

Crocker ordered his workmen to construct a three-sided wood fence around Yung's house. The fence rose forty feet into the sky completely boxing up the German immigrant’s house, depriving him of sunlight and sir. The Yungs felt as if they were living at the bottom of a well. The plants in their garden wilted, and they had to use candles even in daytime.

Yung threatened to build a giant coffin on his roof above the height of the fence, emblazoned on the side turned toward his aristocratic neighbors with a skull and cross-bones, to serve as an advertisement of his business but mostly to remind Crocker of his own mortality. The story of the feud was picked up by the media and the fence soon became one of the city’s most popular attraction. People started taking the California Street cable car just to look at the fence that rose malevolently above Yung’s modest home. The fence was so tall it had to braced with big timbers and cost Crocker $3,000.

The feud went on for a quarter century and outlasted both Crocker and Yung. Read what happened and the ultimate fate of the Crocker mansion at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Eadweard Muybridge)

Melissa Trierweiler started posting funny stories about Disney Princesses back in 2014. She illustrates these tales with her Disney dolls. Now there are 153 episodes at her site The Official Princess Club that explore the weirdness of putting these characters together. The royal couples don't understand how Anna and Kristof can be engaged when the rest of them just met and immediately married. Anna can't resist freezing the glass of water Ariel is swimming in. Tiana can't use the kitchen utensils because they are Belle's friends. Cinderella vacuums the Magic Carpet against his will. And no one can figure out why John Smith is half the size of Pocahontas. See a roundup of 30 representative episodes from over the years at Bored Panda. Or read them all at The Official Princess Club.

Just as we saw in the Indiana Jones movies, the original Nazi party was quite interested in acquiring significant religious relics. Specifically, Heinrich Himmler, who headed the SS, wanted to procure the Holy Grail. Himmler read Otto Rahn's book in which he posited the theory that the Cathars had possession of the grail in the 13th century and managed to hide it. Rahn had been researching the grail for several years at that point. Himmler summoned the archaeologist to work for him, and even made him a member of the SS.   

A small, sensitive and bookish man, Rahn never quite fit in with the boorish, bullnecked bullies of the SS. He was also a heavy drinker, openly liberal in his political views, and gay. In a letter to a friend he wrote shortly before entering Himmler’s service, he remarked sadly that: “It is impossible for a tolerant and generous person to stay for long in this country, which used to be my wonderful homeland.”

In Otto Rahn & The Quest for the Holy Grail, author Nigel Graddon posits that Rahn never had any sympathy for the Nazis and saw them only as a source of research funding and financial support. On one occasion, when spotted by an old acquaintance in his black SS uniform, complete with ceremonial dagger and swastika armband, Rahn reportedly just shrugged and sighed: “One must eat.”

Otto Rahm is sometimes cited as one of the many inspirations for the Indiana Jones character. Read the real story at Military History Now. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Unbekannt, darf unter Nennung des obigen Links weiter verwendet werden, siehe)

In December, Inglewood Drive in Toronto becomes "Kringlewood" because almost everyone puts up a giant inflatable Santa Claus. That started in 2013, as the neighborhood embraced the absurdity of giant inflatable holiday decorations. You see them everywhere, but where do they come from?  

Most of the oversized blow-up decorations you see staked and inflated on holidays like Halloween and Christmas are from a company called Gemmy. (Last year, the company estimated they owned 90-95% of the market share.) They’re the same business behind the Big Mouth Billy Bass, the singing animatronic fish that took the country by storm around the turn of the millennium — a truly viral moment before we called things “viral moments” (just be glad that caroling fish and TikTok didn’t intersect). As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2006, Gemmy had moved on to inflatable decorations after positing that regular consumers would get a kick out of owning versions of the “gorillas and dinosaurs that retailers sometimes use to announce grand openings and sales.” They were right.

Even back then, the Journal made note of the immense size (four to 12 feet tall) and relatively high price (up to $300) of the inflatable decorations, but you get the sense in the article that the popularity was among the kind of people who set their Christmas lights to music; and certainly those who take pride in their annual festive displays — I’m thinking Tim Taylor in the sitcom Home Improvement here — go through phases and trends like any hobbyist. But slowly, surely, these inflatables started spreading to more conventional households, the kind who had traditionally just pulled out the same box of string lights and garland every year.

Read about the rise of Christmas inflatables at Inside Hook. -via Digg